Islamic Civilization

Urban Imperatives

 Fast urban growth in the Islamic world today is symbol of, or synonymous with, chaos, which is in sharp contrast with medieval Islam. Then, urban growth proceeded alongside order, aesthetics, and inclusive of basic amenities. Udovitch has noted how Islamic cities provided economic opportunities, and with their mosques, madrasas, churches, synagogues, schools, bathhouses, etc, contained all that was needed for leading ‘a religious and cultured life.’[1] Oldenbourg equally captures both comfort and fullness of Muslim urban life including necessary amenities as well as social and economic services.[2] A picture common to the better known cities such as Damascus , Baghdad , Cairo , and Cordova as well as other cities.[3] Damascus, for instance, was well supplied with parks, fountains, and public baths; a great commercial and manufacturing industry; public buildings, and great charitable foundations for the care of the sick, orphans, and the aged.[4] Each craft had its quarter, and on the outskirts of the city the landed aristocrats and the wealthier merchants had magnificent homes surrounded with gardens.[5] The contemporary Spanish traveller Ibn Jubayr  described the city as ‘the paradise of the East; mostly impressed by its hospitals and colleges, which he ranks among the ‘great glories of Islam.’[6] Cordoba  (Cordova), under the Romans, was in the words of Lombard ‘an insignificant affair.’[7] Under the Muslims, the first Umayyad governor built walls, restored the old Roman bridge, and built water-mills on a jetty, using the river current.[8] Further transformations and additions were undertaken subsequently, especially in the 10^th century under the reigns of Al-Hakam II, and Hisham II, and under Al-Mansur towards the end of the century. By the 11^th century, the city was said to have 200,000 houses, a population of 600,000; 600 mosques, 900 public baths; nearly 100,000 trade establishments and shops; 50 hospitals, and a university with over 20,000 students.[9] The streets were cleaned, policed, and illuminated at night; water was brought to the public squares and to many of the houses by conduits; and crafts and trades thrived in their variety and multitude.[10] In 12^th century Fes , under the Almohads , writes a chronicler, there were seven hundred and eighty five mosques and zawiyas; 240 places of convenience and purification, and 80 public fountains, which were all fed with water from springs and brooks. There were 93 public baths and 472 mills within and alongside the walls, not counting those outside the city. The same chronicler goes on to mention 89,036 dwelling houses, 19041 warehouses, 467 funduqs for the convenience of merchants, travellers, and the homeless; 9082 shops, two commercial districts, one in the Andalusian district, near the river Masmuda, and the other in the Kairaounese district; 3064 workshops, 117 public wash-houses; 86 tanneries; 116 dye works; 12 copper-smitheries; and 400 paper making shops.[11]

The economic sustenance of the Islamic city was no less crucial. Durant points out that cities and towns swelled and hummed with transport, barter, and sale; pedlars cried their wares to latticed windows; shops dangled their stock and resounded with haggling; fairs, markets, and bazaars gathered merchandise, merchants, buyers, and poets; caravans bound to China  and India , to Persia , Syria , and Egypt ; and ports like Baghdad , Basra , Aden, Cairo , and Alexandria sent Arab merchantmen out to sea.[12] The workshops of Cordoba  employed 13,000 weavers, as well as its armourers and leather workers, whose products were famous throughout the civilised world.[13] The city innovated in the manufacturing of crystal; its woollens, silks, brocades and craftsmanship in embossed goat leather were all very much prized in foreign markets; and so were its jewellery and ivory carving.[14] In Konya, the Turkish  Seljuk capital, Greek and Armenian carpet merchants continued to gather for centuries after its greatness was past.[15] The city had a new market place and shops of all kinds, and included caravanserais, built like basilicas, with high-arched aisles to accommodate the camels.[16] The vast market gardens stretching below the walls into the Anatolian plain were aimed for the supply of its large population.[17] In Samarra, likewise, a market area was built, and smaller markets, called suwayqat, dealt in basic commodities, specifically, foodstuffs such as grains and meat and other unspecified necessities.[18] The area across the river had a ‘certain bucolic quality’ and was characterized by some twelve villages situated along major water channels; the evidence indicating a flourishing agriculture, including excellent cash crops, and the taxes earned on the west bank properties represented some 60 percent of the entire tax base for the city.[19] Urban-rural complementarities in Muslim Spanish towns developed quickly from the 8^th century onwards, the international market encouraging concentration of artisan industries in towns whose monetary economy allowed the urban middle class to buy into the surrounding countryside, thus developing tightly interdependent town-huerta (belts of irrigated parcels) complexes whose agricultural surpluses stimulated both urban economic and demographic growth.[20] Not only were the huertas surrounding most Andalusi  towns closely connected with the economic life of the town, but the urban elite frequently owned country houses (munyat; Castilian, almtinia) dispersed throughout the huerta.[21] Extramural suburbs, Glick notes, tended to form along the most heavily travelled commercial roads leading from the town, or around palaces and military establishments; Cordova had more than twenty.[22] The list of thriving industries in each city, as recorded by contemporary geographers, and as outlined in the previous chapter, is long, and confirms the central place of cities in the social, cultural, and economic life of early Islam..

One of the dominant urban necessities is water supply. And should one ponder briefly on the chaos prevailing in the water supply of Middle Eastern and North Africa n towns and cities today,[23] one marvels at the achievements of early Islam. Lapidus notes how early Islamic society understood that without an abundant supply of water, neither the necessities nor the amenities of civilisation could exist.[24] The quality of beverages depended on the purity of water; and without water, paper, leather, soap and dyed cloth could not be produced, nor in Islam could proper worship be carried on.[25] ‘We can allow ourselves one generalisation about Muslim towns and cities,’ holds Hill, in their times of prosperity, namely that they used a great deal of water not only for drinking and domestic purposes, but also for industrial uses, especially textile, and for public baths and fountains.[26] So medieval Islamic cities became recipients of extremely advanced systems of water management and supply, and for all purposes. In Samarra, where water has been brought by pack animals, feeder channels, which flowed year-round, were now extended from the river.[27] The Great thoroughfare extended on the outer limits of the city, and feeder channels that brought drinking water flanked it on either side.[28] Similar engineering skills were sponsored by Zubaida, wife of Caliph Harun al-Rashid to supply Makkah  with water.[29] Baghdad , with a population in excess of 800,000 (10^th century) was served by a system of canals that gave the city access to the sea, stimulating its trade and manufacture.[30] In 993, the public baths in the city were counted and were found to number 1500.[31] Many more instances could be given for baths in cities and towns, and fountains in public and private estates.[32] Throughout the Muslim world, the typical system was the conduct of water by stream, canal, or qanat (underground conduit) into the city, where it was stored in cisterns, then, conduits from these cisterns, often underground, led to the various quarters, and into residences, public buildings and gardens.[33] The surplus water flowed out of the city into the irrigation system.[34] Of the Syrian cities, Damascus  was most favoured with an extensive and complete water system. The rivers Barada, Qanawat, and Banyas supplied the city through two sets of underground canals, one for fresh water, which brought water to mosques, schools, baths, public fountains, and private homes, and the other for drainage.[35] During the reign of the Mamluk ruler, Tankiz (r.1312-1340), this system was cleaned, repaired, and overhauled to assure the distribution of water in the centre of the city.[36] Antioch enjoyed a plentiful supply of running water for its gardens and the consumption of its inhabitants; water was carried by miles of underground pipes to the more luxurious dwellings to provide water for fountains.[37] Samarkand  had lead piping systems.[38] Water  was conducted into it in a lead lined channel carried on a bridge, which was necessary due to the fact that the land around the city had been excavated to provide clay for the building of the city.[39] The geographer al-Istakhri (d. middle of 10^th century) says that in the city, there is provision of water for the thirsty, and rarely did he see an inn, a street corner, or a square without arrangements for iced water in God’s name.[40] He adds that the water circulates in an old moat of the fortress from where it is carried to the market by means of lead pipes.[41] Another medieval geographer,  Al-Yaqubi (d. 897 or 905), holds that northern towns such as Qumm and Nishapur have underground water systems which supply water to the houses of the town.[42] Al-Muqaddasi, for his part, says that Makkah possesses three reservoirs which are filled from the canals dug by the order of Zubaida from Bustan Bani Amr.[43]

In the Muslim West,  in Marrakech , water was brought to the city for drinking and irrigation by mainly subterranean canals from the mountains twenty miles to the south.[44] In Fes , the geographer Ibn Hawqal, in the 10^th century, noted that its markets are washed daily, whilst three centuries later, it is observed, most homes are crossed by ‘streams,’ and in each house, regardless of its size, there is a saqqia (running fountain).[45] Water  in the city is also used to wash the streets and to operate between 300 and 400 waterwheels.[46] The urban facilities of Algiers  were of high quality, its water supply drawn from cisterns outside the walls, was later enlarged with the construction of aqueducts under Ottoman supervision by a refugee engineer from Grenada .[47] At Al-Qayrawan , in Tunisia , centuries earlier, an underground system, 25 kilometres distant from the city, filled a large decantation basin, from where water passed to another larger one, which then took water to the city, both basins dating from the 9^th century Aghlabid era.[48] In the same country, at al-Mehdia, the geographer al-Bakri describes in great detail the engineering works which carried waters of the Meyanech to the great mosque, relying on aqueducts and large water raising wheels.[49] When the Muslims entered Sicily  in the 9^th century, they established new irrigation techniques, built public baths, and introduced water in many forms to garden and courtyard.[50] In Spain, the Guadalquivir (The Great River) was spanned by a noble bridge of seventeen arches, which, Poole says, ‘testifies to the engineering powers of the Muslims.’[51] In Seville , the Almohads  put an end to the labours of the water carriers by the construction of an Aqueduct; 10^th century Andalusia, Scott observes, being traversed in every direction by magnificent aqueducts, whilst Cordova was a city of fountains.[52] The principle of the siphon, Scott also notes, was familiar to the Muslims eight hundred years before it was known in France, and was utilized to a remarkable degree in the Muslim Hydraulic system.[53] An excellent detailed illustration of how the siphon was developed by Muslim mechanical engineers can be found in the Kitab al-Hayal by the Banu Musa brothers (fl early 9^th century).[54]

Baths  dominated the Islamic urban and social landscape, and were found alongside numerous pools; frequent washing part of religious duty for Muslims.[55] Hot baths were thus in use in the Muslim world from the 7^th century onwards.[56] The great cities of the East possessed conduits of running water; and everywhere could be found many pools and baths.[57] The baths of Damascus , meticulously constructed, were numerous; the historian, Ibn al-Asakir pointing out that during his era, the second half of the 12^th century, there were forty public baths within Damascus, and another seventeen in its suburbs.[58] Two centuries before him, the geographer al-Muqaddasi, when in the city,  exclaimed: ‘There are no baths more beautiful, no fountains more wonderful.’[59] In his time, water was piped from the hot springs in Tiberias to Damascus’ hot baths.[60] Many such baths were still working in 1914, 24 hours a day, and they were also hostels for travellers coming from distant lands to spend a night in warmth and comfort.[61] In Aleppo , in the middle of the 13^th century, Ibn Shadad counted 70 baths in the city itself and another 93 in the suburbs, to which could be added thirty or so private baths.[62] In Algiers , great care was lavished on the hammams (baths), two of which were constructed by high ranking officials for the public at private expense.[63] In Muslim Spain, public baths could be found even in the smallest village; in the middle of the 10^th century,  Cordova alone had 900, whilst, as Scott notes, in the 18^th century, in contrast, there were not as many in all of Europe.[64] The Muslims were in the habit of taking a bath daily, and accordingly, baths were generally reserved for men in the mornings and women in the afternoons.[65]

The baths were built on the traditional plan: a vestibule for undressing followed by a number of rooms, each of which was hotter than the other serially, and finally a cooler one for re-adjustment to the external temperature.[66] Writing early in the 14^th century, the Egyptian Ibn al-Ukhuwwa describes the bath as having three chambers:

‘The first chamber is to cool and moisten, the second heats and relaxes, the third heats and dries.’[67]

The baths and the supply tank had to be thoroughly cleaned every day.[68]

Like most aspects of Islamic civilisation, baths had an intricate link with the faith, while the medieval Christians forbade washing as a heathen custom. Lane Poole notes:

‘The monks and nuns boasted of their filthiness, insomuch that a lady saint recorded with pride the fact that up to the age of sixty she had never washed any part of her body, except the tips of her fingers when she was going to take the mass. While dirt was characteristic of Christian sanctity, the Muslims were careful in the most minute particulars of cleanliness, and dared not approach their God until their bodies were purified.’[69]

The elimination of Islam from Spain thus required the destruction of baths, both public and private.[70] One of the first acts of Isabella after the conquest of Grenada  (1492) was the demolition of baths on account:

‘Of the scandal the sight of apartments devoted to ablution and luxury caused every good Christian, as well as for the reason that their use was always considered entirely superfluous in a monastic institution.’[71]

Philip II (1527-1598) ordered the destruction of all public baths on the ground that they were relics of infidelity.[72] Recurrently measures were passed that all baths, public and private were to be destroyed, and that no one in future was to use them.[73] As an earnest enforcement, all baths were forthwith destroyed, commencing with those of the king.[74] Everyone clean and neat gave the suspicion of being a Muslim who regularly performed their ‘ablutions'.[75] One, Bartolome Sanchez, appeared in the Toledo  Auto da fe of 1597 for bathing, and although overcoming torture, he was finally brought to confess and was punished with three years in the galleys, and perpetual prison and confiscation.[76] Michael Canete, a gardener, for washing himself in the fields while at work, was tried in 1606: there was nothing else against him but he was tortured.[77]

Marcais insists that it is entirely erroneous to believe that the Muslims released their used waters, sewage, or refuse to the street.[78] This is another prevailing stereotype in most writing on Islamic medieval cities. Sanitary regulations were, in fact, maintained to a high degree, and a thorough system of drainage prevailed. Seven centuries after the cities of Spain had been drained by a system of great sewers, their streets kept free from rubbish, and subjected to daily cleansing, Scott observes, Paris was still worthy of its ancient appellation of Lutetia, "The Muddy;" the way of the pedestrian was blocked by heaps of steaming offal and garbage; and droves of swine, the only scavengers, roamed unmolested through court-yard and thoroughfare.’[79] Sewage systems under the city of Valencia  were large enough to admit a cart with ease, and the smallest could be traversed by a loaded beast of burden.[80] Cordoba  was well equipped with a good sewage system, which made it possible to evacuate waste.[81] In the cities of the East, Oldenbourg notes, the conditions of hygiene and comfort were closer to those of the 19^th century than to anything in the Middle Ages.[82] And so it was in North Africa , even in flat cities such as Al-Qayrawan , where such a system would have been hard to establish; and so effective it was that when the French entered the city of Fes  (early in the 20^th century), they found the system adequate enough to leave it untouched.[83] And this applies to other areas; excavation showing this to be the case in Fustat (Cairo ), where each house, probably, had its own cesspool, in some cases linked by piping to a general drainage network.[84] The task of making certain that the whole sewage system worked fell to the urban sewage cleaner, operating as part of the city corporation, under the jurisdiction of the Muhtasib.[85]

Central in the provision and upkeep of all such works and structures were strictly Islamic, religious endowments, waqfs. The provision of drinking water, which as noted, was considered a meritorious action, resulted in many individuals building qanats and constituting them into waqfs, whether in a town, or a particular quarter of a city.[86] In Tunis , water supply was taken in charge by both central administration and religious endowments.[87] Often, the founder laid down the rules, as in one instance, that the water, when it reached the town, should be let into the houses and cisterns, and that as soon as one place had taken water, the remainder should be let into the next place, and that at times when water was scarce, no one should use more than was necessary.[88] The founder also stipulated that rice should not be cultivated with the water of the waqf, which has to flow into the town. Many wells, as well as fountains, in both bazaars and streets of towns were also constituted into waqfs.[89]     

And once more, the role of the Muhtasib, the State Inspector, comes to the fore. Drinking water in the towns came under his general supervision, and if water conduits were in a state of disrepair, it was his duty to have them repaired, and under certain situations could order the townspeople to do so, and if the source of drinking water was fouled, he could order them to rectify the matter.[90]

Health and social issues, equally, in both their foundation, management and upkeep, were the result of strictly Islamic forms of organisation, especially religious endowments, complemented by measures from the central authority. The latter was heavily involved in the construction and setting up of hospitals and hostels, for instance.[91] One of the earliest hospitals was established in old Cairo , at al-Fustat, in 872 by Ibn Tulun, a former slave of Turkish  origin, who rose in the military ranks to become governor of the city. In both construction and management, the hospital absorbed vast resources, which came chiefly from the bazaar and from other waqfs (endowments).[92] The patients were given a special garment and beds, and were served meals and medications, whilst physicians attended to the patients every day. Every Friday Ibn-Tulun visited the hospital, inspected the supplies, conferred with the physicians and visited the patients.[93] Elsewhere, in Aleppo , it is known that a share of profits from lands and orchards, mills and shops, and baths were constituted into waqfs, and were devoted to the financing of mosques, madrasas, and hospitals.[94] Nur Eddin Zangi (r. 1146-1174) instituted a waqf for a hospital for destitute men in Aleppo, which was extended in 1257 to also include a ward for women.[95] This hospital, which was further transformed in the Mamluk period, was mainly to serve the poorer sections of the population.[96] In the Mamluk period other hospitals were established for the same purposes.[97] A number of Muslim hospitals, such as the Adudi in Baghdad , the Qala'un in Cairo and the Mansur in Marrakech , were outstanding in the size of the buildings, their furnishings and equipment, and the quality of their staff.[98] Even allowing for the oriental tendency to exaggerate, Whipple points out, their wealth and revenues made possible the magnificence of these establishments.[99] The director had charge of the administration, supervision of the supplies and medicaments and the furnishing of the hospital; in some instances he had charge of the waqfs of the hospital, but the actual professional work was left to the physicians, in the hands of the physician-in-chief or dean, assisted by the heads of the different specialties.[100] As for the hostels, some of their aims were to provide shelter to the poor, the elderly, or those without family or relatives to care for them.[101] There were also hostels for the care of poor women, widows, divorced, and unmarried girls, who could not be taken in charge by their relatives.[102] Endowments (waqfs) financed such institutions, under the Mamluks , for instance, many waqfs funded hospitals and also convents for the poor.[103] All these services relied largely on group solidarity.[104] This was possible because the Muslim does not just have the personal duty imposed by the faith to help those in distress, through the zaqat (alms), one of the five pillars of Islam, but also in all Islamic cities was found a network aimed for the care of the sick, the poor, women, or those whose relatives failed to care for.[105]

Order and security in the Islamic city, finally, were early imperatives, too. All cities had a police force, in Baghdad , the Sahib al-Shurta (the Police Chief) being the most powerful figure in the urban administration.[106] In Aleppo , various institutions of Seljuk origin policed the city.[107] The same in the Islamic West, such as in Tunis , where the city centre was policed, and so were the suburbs and the surrounding gardens, as well as the markets.[108] In the same country, in Al-Qayrawan , the police deployed agents watching public order, and was under the command of a chief who was second in power to the local governor.[109] The Wali al-Madina, or the city’s local governor, a man of the law, has the duty to ensure order in the city. There was also a wide distribution of police stations within the city.[110] In Spanish cities, Scott and Glick note, order was kept by a strong and well-organised police, patrolling the thoroughfares day and night.[111] Cordoba  was policed by at least three distinct forces, each of them with its specific functions.[112]